She threw another glance at Tanner and Delores. Soren was right. The cooks were busy with the meal prep and not paying a lick of attention to them. And while she and Soren hadn’t discussed the future, they had adopted an unspoken no PDA rule. In front of the Abbotts, the mountain house staff, and her sister, they’d continue on as Birdie and Scooter, cordial combatants—not Bridget and Soren, the vixen and the sex god. She’d tell Lori everything after the wedding. But until then, the maid of honor best man cliché hookup scenario would stay on the down-low.
“All right, I will agree to a kiss. But first, you have to agree to my terms.”
That cat-like glint was back in his green eyes. “The vixen’s playing hardball. I like it. Shoot.”
Before he scrambled her brain with a toe-curling lip-lock session, she needed to relay the schedule.
This wedding wasn’t over yet.
She poked him in his chest. “You cannot let me forget to pick up the wedding cake after dinner. We’ve got a lot going on this evening. There’s the rehearsal up at the chapel, then the big meal at the mountain house after. And then, you and I need to take the truck and go get the cake. It’ll be fine to sit out overnight.” She glanced out the window as snow fell at a steady clip. “And who knows what the weather will be like tomorrow. I cannot stress this enough. There’s going to be so much to do. No matter what happens tonight, we positively must remember to drive down to…” she trailed off as a thread of anger wove through her heart.
She couldn’t help it, and Soren noticed the shift.
“To the Cupid Bakery. And yes, I know that you’re not happy with me regarding their fate but, it’s the way it is sometimes,” he said, reading her mind.
She adjusted one of the profiteroles at the base of the croquembouche that did not require adjusting. “Yeah, I understand that.”
She could make peace with it, right? This is what he did. But that nagging voice in the back of her head still wasn’t totally sold with it being okay.
He tilted her chin up. “And just think what we can do in the front seat of that old Ford F150.”
He was trying. She could see it in his hesitant expression. And this wasn’t a man who hesitated. She pushed her disappointment over Cupid Bakery’s demise out of her mind—or at least tried to.
“The seats are rather bouncy if I remember correctly,” she replied, giving him the hint of a grin.
They could figure this out. They each had a life outside of this mountain wedding bubble. They’d find a rhythm. They could do that.
The muscles in his shoulders relaxed as the unease receded from his beautiful face.
“They are quite bouncy,” he affirmed, looking more like the man who’d rocked her world all night long.
She’d figured him out, or at least, she was pretty sure she had.
He wasn’t an awful person.
He just didn’t like change. And who could blame him after the childhood he’d endured. She could relate to being underestimated and underappreciated. Thanks to Gaston and a string of lackluster boyfriends, she’d earned a Ph.D. in those uns.
But she’d never been unwanted or unloved.
She’d grown up surrounded by love. From baking and singing in the kitchen to cuddly bedtime stories to the reassuring comfort of listening to her mom and dad talk about their day in hushed voices as she drifted off to sleep as a child. Her parents and her grandma Dasher never missed a moment to show her and Lori how much they cared. Sure, she’d been the timid sister, never one to take a risk. But that was changing.
Perhaps, she would look into opening her own business or maybe apply to culinary school. Soren had awakened her inner vixen, and what once seemed impossible now appeared strangely possible.
“What’s going on inside that head of yours?” he asked.
She gave him her best vixen pout. “I’m deciding which part of my body I want you to kiss.”
He twisted the tie of her apron around his fingers, sending sparks right to her lady parts. If he kept looking at her like she was tonight’s dessert, she’d be lucky to make it out of that kitchen with anything left underneath her apron.
He stroked her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “How about we start here and